Kathleen O'Brien - Betting on the Cowboy

No resisting this cowboy!

Brianna Wright has ventured to the Bell River Ranch to make peace with her sister. With enough time here in Colorado, Bree might accomplish that goal and forget the mess of her business back in Boston. Of course, none of that will happen if she lets herself get distracted by a certain gorgeous and charming cowboy—Grayson Harper. Really, resisting a guy as carefree as he is should be easy for someone as responsible as Bree.

But it’s clear Gray has his sights set on her, and his determination is stronger than Bree thought! As they work together on the ranch, she realizes there’s more to Gray than his footloose facade suggests. If that’s true, he just might win her over!

She was a puzzle he wanted to solve.

Gray sensed layers and textures in Bree’s personality that went far beyond “prissy” or “icy” or “dull”…any of the unflattering names she’d been labelled with. Undercurrents both deep and powerful—and touchingly human.

Well, okay, then, maybe he knew Bree better than he had realized. They belonged to that sorry club—the children who had survived the unsurvivable, and didn’t really know why. Or where to go from there.

A large bird, maybe an eagle, landed somewhere high in the pines over their heads, causing the sunlight to shift as the branches swayed. For an instant, the light seemed to catch on two crystal sparkles at the outer edges of Bree’s cool blue eyes.

Tears? Gray frowned. Was the ice princess fighting back tears?

She blinked then, and the illusion disappeared. But he was left with a sudden, inexplicable hunger to know her better, to find out more about her.

A lot more.

And…just his luck. He had only thirty days to do it.

Dear Reader,

I’m a homebody. I prove all the clichés. Home really is where my heart lives. I bloom where I’m planted, and I like my roots deep and permanent. However humble my “castle” might be, there’s no place like it.

I love reading books that feature fascinating houses—as mysterious as Manderley or as simple as the Little House on the Prairie. I also tend to write about characters struggling to find, or to keep, or to reclaim the place in this world that makes them feel whole.

Brianna Wright is, perhaps, the most dislocated heroine I’ve ever written. When her father killed her mother sixteen years ago, she and her sisters were banished from Bell River, the beautiful family ranch. When we meet her, the patchwork life she’s cobbled together in exile has just ripped to pieces. She realizes the one place she wants to go is…

Home. But is there anything left in Silverdell, Colorado, for her?

Surely the answer can’t be Grayson Harper III, the charming former heir to Silverdell’s marble quarry millions. Disinherited, cynical and determined to avoid commitment, Gray takes a menial job at Bell River. He’s made it clear he’s staying only a few weeks, just long enough to win his bet and get reinstated in his grandfather’s will.

Just long enough to break Bree’s already-wounded heart. Or, perhaps, to heal his own.

I hope you’ll enjoy sharing their journey back to that powerful, magical, sometimes dangerous place we call home. And I hope that you, too, find the comfort and love that come with home, sweet home.

Warmly,

Kathleen O’Brien

PS—Please visit me on the web at www.KathleenOBrien.com. Come by and say hi on Facebook or Twitter!

Betting on the Cowboy

Kathleen O’Brien

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kathleen O’Brien was a feature writer and TV critic before marrying a fellow journalist. Motherhood, which followed soon after, was so marvelous she turned to writing novels, which could be done at home. She doesn’t really believe in astrology, but she can’t deny that she fits the Cancer profile well—at least in the “home and family first” department. As the poets say, no man is an island—even if we sometimes think it might be easier that way!

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To my editor, Wanda Ottewell, with thanks.

Your insight and your understanding mean so much to the stories—and to me.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Excerpt

CHAPTER ONE

BRIANNA WRIGHT PULLED up to the Townsends’ elegant Boston Back Bay mansion under a starry black sky, handed her car over to the valet with a forced smile and rushed up the stairs breathlessly. Darn it, she was late. Really late. Ten o’clock. No, almost eleven—thank you so much, gridlocked airport traffic!

Now she’d missed three hours of her own party—well, the party her company, Breelie’s, had produced, anyhow—and Townsend’s fiftieth birthday bash was already in full swing. Music and laughter poured through the open, brilliantly lit windows.

Too much laughter, perhaps, so early? She frowned. The open bar must be getting a workout.

Oh, well. Townsend was a tire magnate, and his millions could cover the liquor tab no matter how high it went. At least it sounded as if the guests were having fun.

She didn’t know why that should surprise her—the parties planned by Breelie’s rarely flopped. But something about this event had always bugged her a little. Maybe it was just that the “harem” theme had never appealed to her. That didn’t matter, of course. Whatever the client wanted, he got. Or, in this case, whatever the client’s trophy wife, Iliana Townsend, wanted, she got.

Bree just hoped Charlie hadn’t gone overboard. Not that she thought he had. As her fiancée and her business partner, he deserved her complete trust. And he had it...of course he did. It was just that...

She’d been out of town for most of the planning, which obviously accounted for some of her discomfort. She trusted Charlie implicitly, of course, but...

She did wish he had answered his cell phone more often this week. When Charlie went dark, it usually meant he was spending more money than he felt like justifying over the phone. He trusted his ability to persuade anyone of anything, but only as long as they were within the target range of his surface-to-surface ballistic charm.

As she passed under a faux ogee arch and into the unrecognizable entry hall, she suddenly froze in place. She stared, openmouthed, at the glittering, jingling, splashing, sparkling madness before her.

For an instant, she couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry.

This was the high-society party she had hoped would put her event-planning company on the Boston A-list? This...this...circus?

What in God’s name had Charlie been thinking? The room writhed with half-naked humanity. Belly dancers. Sword swallowers. Eunuchs. Champagne fountains, ruby-grape pyramids, peacock-feather fans and tables groaning with bacchanalian treats. Charlie had created an entire fake Persian seraglio, complete with a hundred over-the-hill sultans flirting with two hundred giggling harem “girls.”